


I'm the Same Boy I Used to Be

by distefanos



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6540331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/distefanos/pseuds/distefanos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: ‘i called one of the telephone numbers written in the toilet stall and now i want to fuck your voice’ au</p><p>Just so you know, leaving Portugal was one of the hardest things Eric has ever done; falling in love with Dele was by far the easiest.</p><p>Because a wise lad once said: "You know, obviously--I don't think you can look for love. I think it finds you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm the Same Boy I Used to Be

**Max**

Dele wouldn't remember this except in short blurry tableaux but there was a night he was so drunk he started speaking Portuguese. I swear on me mam! Proper Portuguese! I tried to make Siri translate it but he were proper slurring she couldn't understand a word of it. It were real. Ain't no robots can understand him this drunk but if I found a Brazilian or what have you, he'd have been saying something wild, let me tell you.

And then he chundered. Everywhere. All over them bogs I felt terrible for whoever would have to clean it up but I grabbed Harry and we had to sling him over each shoulder to hightail it out of there. Not before I left us a message on the stall though.

 

**Eric**

 For so many years of his life Eric had settled into the easy flow from one language to another, and then it was gone. A lot of things were gone. The red house on the white sand. The sprawling sprint from his back door to the ocean at his ankles. The football. The food. His friends.

But there was still Eric. The concept was simple enough: return to England, you are English after all. He had been through it before and he liked to convince himself that the second time ought to be easier. But sometimes it got lonely. Sometimes he just wanted to speak Portuguese! Sometimes he just wanted to remember the breeze on his scalp and the cool afternoons picking flowers with his mother and even the gravel! There was something reassuring about the crunch beneath his boots and the way you got used to the ball skidding across stone.

And now there was England. Even at home everything was English. He was more Portuguese than the rest of his family and rarely was Portuguese spoken in the house. There were some days that Eric regretted coming back as there were so many parts of him he felt he left behind.

England in a memory for Eric seemed to have a lot to do with beer sloshing onto dented heavy wooden tables and cold glasses on his fingertips. Tonight was no different, tonight was for making new memories. But Eric wanted to revisit the old.

7 (or was it 8?) drinks in and this was just another night Eric wouldn't remember. He sat on a stool at the bar now, fixed between two friends, arms crossed and glaring hard at the cherry liquor among the bar's stock. Studiously ignored by Ed and Mick who spoke across him as if he were hardly there. They knew the signs. Currently he was wondering why he always felt just the slightest bit out of sorts, like he was missing something. He returned to England in part because he missed his family, and now here he missed his home. There was a gap between what Eric had and what he wanted, and like a dark spot on the eye it was always just out of his line of vision but well within his awareness. He could see the mark but he just couldn't quite hit it. 

He spun on his stool and grabbed Mickey's shoulder to steady himself. Mickey half turned to regard his friend. "Hey Mick, remember when--"

"No."

"But I haven't even said it yet!"

"No, Dier, he don't remember because it happened in Portugal and he weren't there." Ed supplies. _Port-u-gal _,__ Ed says, the word dripping off his tongue greasy and derisive and all wrong.

"You can't _know_ I was gunna say something about Lisbon." Eric can feel his lower lip jutting out in an unmistakable pout and he reins in his anger by taking a deep gulp of his beer.

"Go on then. What was you gunna say?" Mickey's practically tapping his foot in anticipation, leering at Eric to come up with an answer that is anything other than what he was going to say (which was, that time we got locked out of the dorms and had to sneak through the kitchens one by one while the night staff were throwing a party in the canteen. And then Pedro, the absolute lamb...)

"I was gunna say go fuck yourselves." Mickey and Ed started to snicker, Eric could feel their condescension wedging it's way between his clenched fists. As he marched away they began to fall all over themselves in mirth. He tried to maintain an even gait but when he gained the short corridor to the loos he couldn't help kicking the door open to a thankfully deserted public restroom.

He slams every stall door, twice, and taps his foot half a dozen times on the urinal flusher before he finally feels a tad better. So many memories swirling around his brain and his mates can't remember one of them because they weren't sodding there. In his mind he's rapidly translating all of his thoughts from English to Portuguese and back again or maybe it's the other way round he's never sure anymore and then he catches his own eye in the mirror and notices that somewhere he knicked his fist on something. A small line of blood, the red in stark contrast to his white knuckles, follows the wrinkle where his pinky finger presses into his palm. He walks into one of the bogs to grab some tissue paper and that's when he notices the message from on high, a message written clear as the Portugal sun on the bathroom wall:

**For Portugese chatline, call 0344 499 5000**

A more sober Eric than this one would have realized that Portuguese was misspelled. A more sober Eric than this one may have thought twice about calling a number on a bathroom stall. A more sober Eric than this one would have had better things to do than question his British existence at 2:30 in the morning on a Friday night. This Eric had just seen a sign from God and was pulling out his phone to dial the number as best he could, in this lighting, with his vision as blurred as it was. This Eric had a million things to say and only one language worth saying them in.

The phone rings for a longer time than most people would wait for an answer until finally there's a groggy voice on the other end. Eric is perched on the tank in one of the stalls, picking loose paint away where someone else had carved deep ribbons into the metal siding.

"Ello?"

"Boa noite..." There was the briefest moment before Eric started talking when he wondered what the hell he was doing but then words were pouring out of him in a quick stream as all the Portuguese he hadn't spoken in ages fought to escape him. "I'm not really sure where to start I'm a footballer and I used to live in Portugal and I miss it! I miss it so much! I miss the people and the food and the beach and I miss speaking your beautiful beautiful language!"

Eric paused to take a breath and the person on the other end of the line coughed. "Max? That you? What you're doing calling me at half 2 in the morning for?" He grunted in English.

"Have I got the wrong number?" He asked tentatively, still in Portuguese.

"Right I'm hanging up now Max." The voice tells Eric. And inexplicably Eric is possessed by an urge to keep the seemingly non-Portuguese proficient person on the line. Something in the voice grasps at the confines of his memory, and he chases the feeling. Eric squints at the message on the stall and sort of realizes the situation but then it slips away and he scrambles to say something before the line goes dead.

"Wait. I thought this was a Portuguese chatline." He says in English. That's when everything becomes rather alarming. There's a lot of movement on the other end of the line and a massive fit of giggles that makes Eric frown but also tickles at his memory a little more. He sits up a little straighter, presses his hand flat against the metal stall and let's the noise wash over him. Then the voice is yelling in his ear.

"YOU WHAT!?" Eric winces at the sheer volume of the disbelief being leveled at him currently. "A PORTUGUESE CHATLINE?" Eric holds the phone away from his ear. There's a pause in which his mystery chat partner seems to be listening, not for Eric, but for movement on his end of the phone. He continues at a lower decibel.  "Are you taking the piss? Right, who's this then."

Of all the questions he had just been asked only one of them seemed simple enough, and so he answered it.

"It's Eric."

"Alright then 'Eric'," He can hear the air quotes. "And you've called me up yeah? To chat dirty things to you? In Portuguese? Am I understanding this correctly, mate?"

"No!" Eric already interrupted at the dirty things bit. "That's not why I've called! No you've got it wrong! I just." He gestures vaguely at thin air. "Wanted to speak Portuguese."

"You speak Portuguese?"

"I were speaking it earlier weren't I?"

"How should I know? _I_ don't speak Portuguese"

"THen WHy'S YOUR NUMBER IN THE BOGS FOR PORTUGUESE CHAT" 

The voice exhales slowly and pulls Eric in conspiratorially with a small sigh. "Let me tell you, Eric--"

"Dier."

"Let me tell you, Eric Dier, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about, my friend. Where are you right now?"

"Rosen Crown." Eric replies obediently.

"Ah, Rose and Crown at Landmark?" Eric nods. "With the dodgy rooftop terrace looking over the church?"

"The very same."

"Ledge, I'm there all the time. Now walk me through this next bit, you've found some digits on the bathroom wall, and decided to give us a ring, yeah?"

"Sounds accurate, yeah."

"Now tell me in Portuguese."

"Sorry?"

"Tell me why you've called me in Portuguese. Isn't that what you was saying in the beginning?"

"But you've just said, you don't speak Portuguese--?"

"Eric, you're making this hard on yourself mate. I thought you wanted to chat Portuguese. What you wearing, by the way?"

Almost without thinking Eric switches to Portuguese to exclaim once again that he wasn't trying to get off.

"Are you flirting with me, Eric Dier?" The voice giggles back. Eric huffs in response.

"I'm just wearing normal jeans and t-shirt, aren't I." He mutters.

"Portuguese, my man." The voice corrects him.

"What's the point, you can't even understand me!" 

"I'm good with languages, me. You know, there was a time I lived in Nigeria a few months and even though most of me mates there could speak English I would be the only one couldn't speak their language so for hours and hours they'd be speaking Yoruba and I'd only hear small bits of English once in a while. By the time I were leaving I could understand large portions of conversation and even speak a few phrases, just from listening. So tell me a story, Eric Dier, and maybe I'll pick up some Portuguese."

So Eric told him the story he had wanted to tell earlier. He got rather animated when he got to the part where Pedro started choking on the cherries and couldn't help the smile breaking across his face when his partner would laugh at the right pauses and seemed to follow along with the story. After a while Eric's story petered off, and he stopped.

"Yeah, I didn't understand a word of that. Good story though." Eric laughed out loud at this and launched into another story but he hadn't gone more than a few words when he was interrupted. "Dier. Dier!"

"Eh?"

"I reckon pub's closing now and all. You still in the loo?"

"Er, yeah."

"Best get going real quick." Eric nodded and then grunted his assent. The idea of the pub closing and going out into the night was a sobering thought, and Eric lost his will to speak as he walked out into the pub and looked around for his mates. There were only a handful of people remaining, the regulars, but no Mick and Ed. He adjusted the phone to his ear and stepped out into the street. "Did you say you played football?" Eric had almost forgotten that there was somebody on the phone with him, he picked his way across the pavement and imagined the stranger stretched out in bed, listening to Eric make his way home. He felt safe. 

"Yeah, I do. Played in Portugal for 8 years, then to England, then back in Portugal a few more years. Now in England again." He explained. 

"Bet you must hate the weather here, after all that sun." Eric had to laugh because every day he hated the weather but just that moment he had been thinking that the smell of the rain rising off the pavement and the way the moistness of it sat in the air and cooled his skin was almost comforting. The occasional car rolled past but he saw no cabs in sight and as it was only a few blocks he decided to walk it. 

"Something like that." He answered in Portuguese. "I never got your name." He said in Portuguese and then in English. 

"Je m'appelle Dele." Eric didn't know a whole lot of french but he knew that 'appelle' should not rhyme with 'Dele'.

"That's French." Eric told him in Portuguese.

"How do I say it in Portuguese, then?" 

"Meu nome é Dele." Dele tried and failed several times to repeat the phrase back to him. "Well the good news is you've pronounced your name right."

"Shut up!" Dele laughed, Eric could practically hear him tongue between teeth, repeating the phrase back in his head.

"Yeah, I'm not so sure you're good at languages." Eric joked.

"I never said I were good at speaking them." A pause. "Say my name again."

"Dele?"

"I like the way you pronounce it." Dele said quietly.

"Have I got it wrong?" Eric asked. Something about the moment embarrassed him. "I'm walking home now, Dele. You tell me a story now."

"Well, Eric Dier, I'm laid in bed, and if you must know, I sleep in boxers--" 

"Not like that!" Eric blushed furiously and hugged his arms across his chest. Dele snickered but didn't continue. "Haven't even bought me dinner first, the nerve." He got a genuine laugh off that one. After a bit more giggling Dele launched into a story of a trip to Zante when his mates were convinced that their friend had drowned when another mate pushed him off the end of the pier. 

"I'm not even joking Max had called the airline booked his flight home before police were called in, he were that convinced he'd killed Georgie." By then Eric was letting himself into his flat and he quickly bent to quiet his dogs as they excitedly skipped around his legs. He sat on the floor of his foyer and let his dogs climb all over him as Dele lapsed into silence. "I'm a footballer too, you know, Eric Dier." Dele said after a while. Eric had been leaning against the wall, content in the static silence, absently petting his dogs in his lap, eyes shut and nearly dozing. 

"Your voice is really hot." He muttered unthinkingly. More giggling.

"He is flirting with me!" Eric smiled but didn't reply. "I googled you earlier, you're fit." Dele said.

"Shit, don't google me." Eric complained. 

"I already googled you, you ham." Eric couldn't think of a response to that so he dragged himself to his feet and slouched to his bed. His dogs chased him there, leaping onto the bed and running in circles across the comforter. They leapt out of the way as he pulled it back and crawled in between the sheets.

"Can I google you?" He asked after a while.

"Is that a euphemism?"

"I don't know." Eric sighed. As he turned on his back the walls started spinning a bit, one of his dogs had settled somewhere across his stomach in a way that made him feel queasy. 

"Can I call you sometime, Dele?" Eric stifled a yawn. "I think the sun's coming up."

"I hope you do, Eric Dier." Dele answered. 

Before Eric even realized, he was asleep. He woke with a start not too many hours later, coat still on, tangled in the sheets in an odd way. Without opening his eyes he felt around for his phone across the mattress. Finally he realized he could feel it pressing into his ribcage and scooped it up. He ripped off his jacket, then his jeans, then his shirt, and climbed back into bed, shifting the dogs so he could rearrange the mess he had made of the bedspread. 

He scrolled through 10 missed calls and texts from Mickey and Ed and one of his brothers to find a text from a number without a name that must have been sent shortly after they signed off. If it weren't for the message, Eric might have thought he dreamt it all. 

 As Eric moved his thumb across the screen he felt the skin on his palm pull against a scab he couldn't remember acquiring the night before. The night came back to him in short bursts punctuated with a voice that sounded as familiar as a song he used to sing as a boy. 

All it said was "Bom Dia" but Eric didn't need to place a name to it or think about it for more than second, it already felt like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Weeks ago, in a pub washroom in North London at 2am, there was a meeting which appears to defy the time-space continuum.
> 
> "Here, are you speaking French?" Says a voice at the urinal next to Eric. Rather shocking as he was convinced he was alone. He blinks rapidly and makes his way towards the sink to wash up.
> 
> "Er, Portuguese, just a song I used to know."
> 
> "It's beautiful, isn't it? Beautiful language." The stranger is standing quite close to Eric now, two large uneven front teeth the first thing Eric notices as the boy smiles widely and vacantly at him, clearly completely up-the-tree drunk.
> 
> "More beautiful than French, yeah." The boy giggles at this. 
> 
> "Sing it again." The boy demands, he leans against the wall and waits for Eric to continue. Eric watches the boy dolefully, unsure if he is being teased, before finally singing the first few lines of the song. The boy closes his eyes in apparent bliss, waggles a finger as if conducting Eric in his song, and takes a few beats to realize Eric's stopped singing.
> 
> "Where'd you learn Portuguese, mate?" 
> 
> "In Portugal." 
> 
> "Sounds great. I'm Dele by the way." 
> 
> "Eric."
> 
> "Teach me some Portuguese, Eric. But hang on, I think I'm going to be sick."


End file.
